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ON THE RECORD
JOHN REID INTERVIEW
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC ONE DATE: 21.3.99
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Let's deal with the risk first of
all. Do you accept that there is a real risk here than an awful lot of jobs are
going to be lost perhaps to the French, perhaps to Luxembourg wherever it may be
that they go to reregister. Fifty thousand jobs potentially. You must be worried
about that.
JOHN REID: Well if there were a risk over
fifty thousand jobs obviously we're worried but the figures which have been quoted
from the survey unfortunately no-one will release the methodology of the statistics
of the figures and that's one of the sort of things we could look at in the forum
because if I could just reply on the budget and what our view of this is as far as
the budget's concerned we did freeze, I notice that Steve mentioned and quite properly
that we were charging a high vehicle excise duty on those lorries which damage our
roads far more than.....
HUMPHRYS: These are the forty tonners on
five.....
REID These are the forty tonners
on five axles......
HUMPHRYS: Which is what everybody is using
on the continent now......
REID: Well just let me finish that
because what we have said to people in Britain is that if they get six axles we're
prepared to allow them a forty one tonne lorry so that we've got the same capacity
and the actual VED on that is lower than the existing thirty-eight tonne. We want
to encourage it so ninety-eight per cent of the lorry categories we have frozen in
the budget and in addition we've given a real alternative to the forty tonner. However
can I also say we cut corporation tax, long term capital gains tax, we cut national
insurance contributions, we cut income tax......
HUMPHRYS: That applies to everybody not just
.....
REID: That applies to... yes but
it applies to all our hauliers John and if you take the total cost together of operating
a fifty truck fleet in the United Kingdom and compare it with France and Belgium
and the Netherlands, to the best of our knowledge and figures it costs four hundred
thousand pounds more in France, six hundred thousand pounds more in Holland and almost
eight hundred thousand more in the Netherlands...sorry in Belgium. If those figures
are disputed we are saying we can go forward either through dialogue or through disruption
and I'm offering Steve Norris and the Freight Transport Association and both sides
of that industry, the unions themselves, the opportunity to sit down with us, to
build a bridge for the future of the haulage industry, to bring in the Treasury and
the DTI and to see exactly what the position is so that in future years everything
will be on the agenda, everything can be looked at......
HUMPHRYS: Okay, so in other words when you
have this meeting to which Steve Norris had made clear he's pretty happy to go, you
are prepared to reconsider and the Treasury will reconsider it's policy on, for instance,
on the extra tax on diesel fuel which is huge at the moment, the cost of a gallon
of diesel in Britain compared with France is astronomical. As you know they fill
up in France, they come over here, they use the stuff here they go back there they
fill it up again.
REID: John can I just say on that
so do British hauliers.
HUMPHRYS: Indeed. That's precisely what
I'm saying. That's exactly the point so you lose the excise duty so the question
is...
REID: Let's deal with how much we
might lose on that. The excise duty lost based on the number of lorries coming into
this country and the fuel tank capacity of them is somewhere between a minimum of
thirty million pounds and an absolute maximum of two hundred and forty million.
HUMPHRYS: Two hundred and forty million pounds
is a lot of money.....
HUMPHRYS: Absolutely and it is nearer the
lower end however the cost in damage to our roads from forty tonners and five axles
is hundreds of millions of pounds so the public are entitled to expect that we support
a thriving profitable haulage industry in a very competitive market and I accept
that but also that we should balance that up with the difficulties of congestion
pollution and road damage because if we don't do that then the hauliers are given
a blank cheque but the rest of the country has to pay for it.
HUMPHRYS: We'll come back to that in a second
but are you saying that this forum, and there wouldn't be a lot of point of having
it if it didn't do this would there, will be able to look at issues like the tax
on diesel, like vehicle excise duty and perhaps promise that in future, can't do
anything about the last budget, Gordon Brown's made that perfectly clear, promised
that in future the increases may be less than they have been in the past.
REID: I can go even further than
that: The Treasury at present is reviewing the whole VED including VED on lorries.....
HUMPHRYS: And diesel tax.....?
REID: And diesel. The whole of VED
is being looked at at the present. What we want to do is to put that in a broader
context with both parts of the industry that is the employees and the employers with
the DTI, the Treasury and myself as Transport Minister so that instead of going through
the disruption that has been threatened for tomorrow and I do hope it doesn't go
ahead, I genuinely hope it doesn't go ahead because I think the last thing that the
long suffering public need, already suffering from congestion, pollution, damage
to the roads and so on is road hauliers coming in and blocking up and inconveniencing
and disrupting millions of people who are already paying their taxes who have no
quarrel with the hauliers but tomorrow are going to be penalised when there is an
alternative to sitting down and talking about this when everything will be on the
agenda and we can see and can resolve it for the future.
HUMPHRYS: And some of those increases therefore
may be reversed? That is possible?
REID: No John. The last budget is
not going to be ......
HUMPHRYS: No but in future you're saying.....
REID: In future we want to look at
it. VED has already been reviewed by the Treasury. Let's look at all of these aspects
but let's recognise that we have to get a balance here. I've been working with the
Trade Transport Association and the Road Haulage Association and I have to say very
constructively to try and get a decent profitable and competitive distribution system
in this country, indeed recently I was at the Freight Transport Association Conference,
we lunched a document there looking at best practice, Steve and the Road Haulage
Association are bringing in new technology to make sure that we've not got empty
lorries running in the roads when we don't need them. Let's build on that and if
the Road Hauliers are saying 'Look this is absolutely intolerable we can show you
figures to prove it let's put them on the table. Let's discuss that over the next
year'. And at the end of that if we haven't managed to reach some sort of consensus
in the future then of course they'll be entitled to say 'well look we tried and failed'.
However what they to accept is that the public is concerned about congestion, pollution,
damage to our roads and noises and as a government we have to get that balanced.
Now we offered dialogue - if they chose disruption and inconvenience and dislocation
and penalise the public I don't think the public will be very accepting of the point
of view.
HUMPHRYS: But your problem is this isn't
it, that if you are quite clear that the reason for these taxes, the higher diesel
tax and so on, is to stop those particular lorries operating on the roads of Britain,
you cannot offer them concessions can you because you are quite determined that will
not happen, for all the reasons that you have given me: pollution and damage to the
roads..to the surface of the roads and so on.
REID: There's two different things.
First, of all there's the Vehicle Excise Duty. There's a review of that going on
already and I want to incorporate that inside, it's been carried out in the Treasury.
The second thing is on the diesel tax. Now, what hasn't been mentioned, apart from
all the cuts and the frozen VED that I mentioned earlier on, what hasn't been mentioned
in the budget is the alternative fuels, the differential on low sulphur diesel for
instance has been maintained and increased. There was a twenty-nine per cent cut
on the compressed natural gas. Now that is something we want to develop safely..
HUMPHRYS: ...costs the small haulier a great
deal of money wouldn't it, to convert their lorries to that sort of thing and the
point that Steve Norris is making is that at the moment an awful lot of them are
literally close to bankruptcy, they may go bust.
REID: If you would let me finish
on that one because we are developing that. During the week there was a complete
lie actually paraded. I'm not suggesting that Steve or the road hauliers did it -
about Safeway. Safeway, it was rumoured, were going abroad, this is the atmosphere
we're in now, where we get these exaggerated claims, they have no intention of doing
it...
HUMPHRYS: What about Eddie Stobart .....
REID: I'll come to Eddie in a second.
Safeway indeed are working with us in developing compressed national gas which not
only has benefits from
the point of view of the environment but also has a much quieter engine which allows
them to do deliveries during the night in a way that they weren't previously allowed
to do by local authorities. As regards Eddie Stobart , Eddie Stobart is a great British
success story, none of us want to lose Eddie Stobart , we've got used to his lorries
on the road and I hope..
HUMPHRYS: ..but you will if he carries out
his threat and goes abroad.
REID: Eddie has eight hundred lorries,
the two hundred he's registering abroad, let's be quite straight about this, are
already operating abroad. They are left-hand drive lorries I think probably, they're
probably paying more in insurance because they're registered here. It is a two-way
street. Just as Eddie is going with a quarter of his trucks abroad, we are getting
companies that are coming here, French companies and European companies who are registering
here because they are working here.
HUMPHRYS: So you think they are exaggerating
their concerns, their problems.
REID: I think there is over capacity
in the industry. I think that the road hauliers face a very difficult situation,
there's no question about that, that is why we've had the cuts we've had in insurance
and taxation, that is why we've frozen for two years running, most of the lorry taxes
but if there are continuing problems with it, which I am concerned about, then I
am prepared to bring all sides together in an attempt, through dialogue, to solve
this and ensure a good future for the road hauliers.
HUMPHRYS: And the Treasury will listen and
might even give them a rebate on fuel, which is one of the things they are after?
REID: Well you know none of us can
speak for the Treasury ultimately, but we can say that they are..have given every
indication that they are willing to enter into this dialogue and if they are willing
to do that, I think that is a far better way of solving it than dislocating, disrupting
and inconveniencing the people of this country, who remember are paying their taxes
as well.
HUMPHRYS: John Reid, thank you very much
indeed.
REID: Thank you John.
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